Litseen

Tom Gauld w/ Mallory Ortberg
2017-11-07 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Booksmith is pleased to welcome acclaimed Guardian cartoonist Tom Gauld as he presents a best-of collection of literary humour cartoons — Baking with Kafka. With Tom will be Mallory Ortberg—join us!
In his inimitable style, British cartoonist Tom Gauld has opened comics to a crossover audience and challenged perceptions of what the medium can be. Noted as a “book-lover’s cartoonist,” Gauld’s weekly strips in The Guardian, Britain’s most well-regarded newspaper, stitch together the worlds of literary criticism and pop culture to create brilliantly executed, concise comics.
From sarcastic panels about the health hazards of being a best-selling writer to a list of magical items for fantasy writers (such as the Amulet of Attraction, which summons mainstream acceptance, Hollywood money, and fresh coffee), Gauld’s cartoons are timely and droll—his trademark British humour, impeccable timing, and distinctive visual style sets him apart from the rest. Lauded both for his frequent contributions to New Scientist, The Guardian and The New York Times, and his Eisner-nominated graphic novels, Tom Gauld is one of the most celebrated cartoonists working today. In Baking with Kafka, he proves this with one witty, sly, ridiculous comic after another.

Farid Matuk
2017-11-08 18:30 - 20:30 | Maude Fife Room, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Farid Matuk is the author of This Isa Nice Neighborhood (2010) and My Daughter La Chola (2013). He serves on the poetry editorial team for Fence magazine and as contributing editor to The Volta. He is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.

Maxine Chernoff + Gillian Conoley
2017-11-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Camera is Maxine Chernoff’s 16th book of poems. Her previous book, Here, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award, as were 2 of her 6 works of fiction. Her book of stories Signs of Devotion was a NYT Notable Book of 1993. In 2013 she won an NEA Fellowship in Poetry and in 2009 the PEN USA Translation Award for a co-translation of the Selected Poems of Friedrich Hoelderlin. She is former editor of New American Writing and professor and former chair of the Dept of Creative Writing at SFSU. She has taught in Exeter, England, Prague, and St Petersburg, Russia, and was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome in 2016.
Gillian Conoley was awarded the 2017 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her eighth poetry collection, Peace, was named an Academy of American Poets Standout Book for 2014 and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Other books include The Plot Genie, Profane Halo, Lovers in the Used World, and Tall Stranger, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Conoley’s work has received the Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts grant, and a Fund for Poetry Award. Conoley’s translations of Henri Michaux, Thousand Times Broken, appeared with City Lights in 2014, and was named one of the top ten poetry books of 2014 by Publishers Weekly. She co-translated (with Domenic Stansberry) Tristan Tzara’s Dada Manifesto, On Feeble Love & Bitter Love (Molotov Editions, 2016). Conoley is Poet-in-Residence and Professor of English at Sonoma State University since 1994 and lives in the Bay Area.

Live! w/ Dr. Dawn McGuire
2017-11-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Walnut Creek Library, 1644 North Broadway, Walnut Creek, CA, 94596, United States
Neurologist and poet Dawn McGuire will be in conversation with Tom Donahoe and read selections from her latest poetry collection “American Dream With Exit Wound,” which is inspired by her work with post 9/11 veterans. Produced by the Walnut Creek Library Foundation, Live! from the Library is free and open to the public. RSVPs are encouraged and can be made online at www.wclibrary.org/live or by phone at 925.935.5395.

Susan Kolodny + Carolyne Wright
2017-11-09 19:30 - 21:30 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Susan Kolodny’s new book of poems is Preserve. Robert Thomas says, “Susan Kolodny’s moving new collection begins with her arrival in Botswana and tells the story of a journey that transforms her understanding of herself and her own culture…Kolodny is unsentimental about the challenges that game preserves face…and the book itself becomes a Preserve she creates to save a world whose survival is at risk.” Her first collection is After the Firestorm. She’s also a psychoanalyst and author of The Captive Muse: On Creativity and its Inhibition.
Carolyne Wright’s new book of poems is This Dream the World: New & Selected Poems. David Axelrod says, “The language of Carolyne Wright’s poems is as rich, diverse, and bursting with life as the natural world of the coastal Northwest she calls home; but her home is the world, much of which she has traveled. Her poems engage that larger world and the lives of its citizens, their history, turmoil, and jeopardy. Hers is a poetry both of celebration and of sober courage.” Author of numerous previous collections, including A Change of Maps, she is co-editor of Raising Lily Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace, a groundbreaking anthology. She is also a translator who has published five books of translation from both Spanish and Bengali. In addition, she has published a book of essays, and has received a Fulbright and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. She lives in Seattle.

Memorial for Joe Pachinko
2017-11-10 19:00 - 21:00 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Hosted by William Taylor, Jr.
Joe Pachinko was born 1960 in Oakland, California. In 2003, through his Superstition Street Press, he republished Beat icon Lenore Kandel’s groundbreaking work The Love Book, which was banned and suppressed upon its original release in 1966. He is the author of the novel SWAMP!, and two poetry collections: The Urinals of Hell, and Stumpfucker Cavalcade. His second novel, Geek City Apocalypso was published in 2012 by Last Gasp.
Beloved poet Joe Pachinko has left the building. Join us for a celebration of his life and work.
Pachinko’s work, and tributes to the late poet will be read by the following:

Brenda Knight
Nicole Henares
Christopher Robin
Brian Morrisey

David Rocklin: The Night Language
2017-11-10 19:30 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery is happy to welcome David Rocklin for The Night Language. Please join us!
The Night Language tells the story of a young man, Prince Alamayou of Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia), who is taken from his home and the Abyssinian war to the court of Queen Victoria—a world he knows nothing about. With him is Philip Layard, a young apprentice to one of the doctors on the battlefield in Abyssinia, who becomes Alamayou’s guardian, only friend, and eventually, the love of his life. When Parliament accuses Alamayou of murder, the young prince is sentenced to return to Abyssinia, where he will be executed.
His only hope comes from the very thing that cannot be uttered: the unexpected and forbidden love between Alamayou and Philip.
Inspired by true events, The Night Language is a unique novel of love, loss, and the consequences of repressive societies.
—
“Not since Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient have I read a novel in which a character—the story and skinsong of Alamayou–has haunted language, history, and heart so intensely. If you read one novel this year, let it be The Night Language. It is still possible for a reader’s heart to be broken back open.” —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of The Small Backs of Children and The Chronology of Water
—
David Rocklin is the author of The Luminist and the founder/curator of Roar Shack, a monthly reading series in Los Angeles. He was born and raised in Chicago and now lives in LA with his wife, daughters, and a 150 lb Great Dane who seriously needs to stay on his own bed. He’s currently at work on his next novel, The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger.
—
If you cannot attend the event, but would like a signed copy of The NIght Language, please follow this link and place your order, filling out the special request field: http://www.booksmith.com/book/9781945572487

THIS IS FOR THE MOSTLESS: BOOK LAUNCH
2017-11-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Arkipelago Books, 1010 MISSION ST, SAN FRANCISCO, 94103
Book Launch for This is for the mostless by Jason Magabo Perez. Special guests: Aimee Suzara, Janice Lobo Sapigao and Jason Bayani.
THIS IS FOR THE MOSTLESS (WordTech Editions, 2017), writer and performer Jason Magabo Perez’s debut book, is a lyrical collection of autobiographical poems, essays, fictions, and oral histories. Moving against discipline and genre, from city to city, barrio to barrio, these stories and sympathies are filled with familia and trauma, and cast with wildly divergent figures as iconic as Don Cheadle and Mandy Moore, and as obscure as Cobra Commander and Perez’s own mother, a Filipina migrant nurse who in 1976 was framed by the FBI for murder. Ultimately, Perez celebrates and mourns the multiple migrations and afterlives of grandmothers, gangsters, girlfriends, superheroes, and poets. This book is about and most definitely for all of the mostless.
“Jason Magabo Perez pulls me into his stories like the ink of a comic book or opening hook. He drops 1972, Redlands, Manila, the smell of eucalyptus, Raid and fried fish, and ain’t no ipis will interrupt this flow. All the aunties, cousins and homies are here, and there’s an earnest, tender urgency in these verses and jagged lines and tangles that refuse to forget. He makes me want to listen.” – JAI ARUN RAVINE, AUTHOR OF THE ROMANCE OF SIAM
“When the poet you are reading raises pen to sky and cuts its belly open, revealing river of ancestor hair, uncut, uncombed, rife with angels and stories, and holds it aloft, unsorted, to show you you–historical, non-fictional, truthfully and wholeheartedly loved, shivering silver sardine in the oily tin of our im/migrant story…then the poet you are reading is Jason Magabo Perez, and you are blessed. Read this book like postdated scripture, and be loved.” – DENIZEN KANE, POET/EMCEE, TYPICAL CATS
“These poems mark the time of millennial southern California, the time of brown boyhood, the time after death and before birth. ‘A time when we’re beginning to notice that we are so death & so penniless. / So penny-skinned.’ Perez asks how to live in the wake of violence and disconnection and a girl asks the alphabet. A balm of persistence, commemoration becomes a promise of a time beyond time: ‘Today, we’re coloring the king.'” – KIMBERLY ALIDIO, AUTHOR OF AFTER THE PROJECTS THE RESOUND
“This is for the mostless is a smartly forged momentum and memento, a forward-thinking look back. From one line to the next, Jason Magabo Perez can compel a tear or noisy nostalgia; mostly, we are asked-with the urgency of justice and artful storying-to take all things that happen in our suburbs, cities, and histories deeply and consciously personal.” – VEJEA JENNINGS, AUTHOR OF FREE LUNCH

Perfectly Queer: Non-Fiction November
2017-11-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro Street, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Authors Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Peter Gajdics, and Julia Serano read from and discuss their works of non-fiction.

Jerome Rothenberg
2017-11-13 19:30 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of
Technicians of the Sacred, Third Edition: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, Revised and Expanded, 50th Anniversary
published by University of California Press
Hailed by Robert Creeley as “both a deeply useful book and an unequivocal delight” and by the LA Times Book Review as one of the hundred most recommended American books of the late 20th century, Jerome Rothenberg’s landmark anthology Technicians of the Sacred has educated and inspired generations of poets, artists, musicians, and other readers, exposing them to the multiple possibilities of poetry throughout the world. Juxtaposing “primitive” and archaic works of art from many cultures with each other and with avant-garde and experimental poetry, Jerome Rothenberg contends that literature extends beyond specific temporal and geographic boundaries, while acting as a retort to those who would call that larger humanity into question. A half-century since its original publication, this revised and expanded third edition provides readers with a wealth of newly gathered and translated texts from recently reinvigorated indigenous cultures, bringing the volume into the present and further extending the range and depth of what we recognize and read as poetry.
Jerome Rothenberg is an internationally acclaimed poet and anthologist. His more than ninety books include the multivolume Poems for the Millennium, coedited with Pierre Joris, Jeffrey Robinson, and John Bloomberg-Rissman. He is Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts and Literature at the University of California, San Diego.

Elizabeth Willis
2017-11-14 17:30 - 19:30 | Mills Hall Living Room, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland , CA, 94613, United States
Elizabeth Willis’s most recent book, Alive: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her other books include Address, Meteoric Flowers, Turneresque, The Human Abstract, and Second Law. She is also the editor of Radical Vernacular: Lorine Niedecker and the Poetics of Place. She taught poetry at Mills College from 1995 to 2002. In 2015 she joined the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Rosemary Manno + Clif Ross
2017-11-14 18:30 - 20:30 | North Beach, SF Public Library, 850 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States
Join us every Tuesday evening in the historic literary epicenter of San Francisco to hear poets from near and far read their work!
Tuesdays at North Beach is a highly-respected weekly poetry series celebrating internationally acclaimed poets and showcasing local talent. Past guests have included Jonathan Richman, Diane di Prima, California Poet Laureate Al Young and freshly-discovered poets from our sister program, Poets 11.
The series is presented by Friends and curated by Friends’ Poet-in-Residence, Jack Hirschman.

STEVE ZOLNO at Books Inc. in The Marina
2017-11-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Books Inc. in The Marina, 2251 Chestnut St, San Francisco , CA, 94123, United States
Management and Educational Consultant Steve Zolno discusses his encouraging and timely book, The Future of Democracy: Lessons from the Past and Present to Guide Us on Our Path Forward.
What is democracy and where did it come from? Is it a new development or was it always present in human society? And perhaps the most important question: what can we do to preserve and strengthen democracy among the forces that oppose it?
In this book we explore trends throughout history that have brought democratic – and undemocratic – government to people wherever civilization exists. We discuss where democracy has been most, and least, successful and why. But our most important task is to clarify what each of us can do, as politicians or ordinary citizens, to bring the benefits of democracy more fully into the personal and political lives of those who cherish it.
Includes the section: Guide to Voting in a Democracy

Event address:

Books Inc.
2251 Chestnut St

San Francisco, CA

Nan Cohen
2017-11-14 20:00 - 22:00 | A2 Cafe, 5212 Broadway St, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
Nan Cohen is the author of two books of poetry, Rope Bridge and Unfinished City, and her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Slate, Ploughshares, Tikkun, Gulf Coast, and other magazines and anthologies. Her awards and honors include a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is the poetry director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

Perfectly Queer-East Bay: "Queer Femme Poetry"
2017-11-15 19:00 - 20:00 | Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Guest curator Gr Keer hosts an evening of “Queer Femme Poetry” with readers Vanessa Rochelle Lewis, Maya Chinchilla, Rona Luo, and Crystal Azul Barr.

Hilton Obenzinger
2017-11-15 19:00 - 20:30 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
This is the East Bay book launch for Hilton Obenzinger’s new book, Treyf Pesach:
Blasphemy is holy—and exciting, outrageous literature in Treyf Pesach (Unkosher Passover). Novelist Paul Auster declares that this book “strikes with all the force of an exploding bomb—because it speaks the truth.” This collection of poems presents radical departures from traditional rituals, formats and conventions: alternative Passover Seders, Yom Kippur liturgy, Thanksgiving prayers, psalms and other poems in the form of proclamations, resolutions, jazz improvisations, incantations, rants, orations, comic monologues, oil spills, life spills, songs, visions, undocumented documents, borders, suns, farewells, minutes of meetings, talk-stories, and all accompanied by provocative drawings of Treyf Passover Seder plates by artist Charles Steckler. In this book the symbolic plate is arrayed with treyf (un-kosher food) and the story of the Exodus with untypical meanings, whiskey instead of wine, recounting the continual slavery of wars and military occupations. The poems in Treyf Pesach have taken place over the course of years and various occasions, from vicious aggressions, to absurd walls, to smallpox blankets, to oil spouting across the Gulf, and more, all framed by the first months of the Trump regime. Some have been read out loud at Seders, Yom Kippur services, Thanksgiving Day benedictions, Sunday fellowships, and other ceremonies. But those are the exceptions. For the most part Treyf Pesach has been placed under arrest and shoved across the borders of respectability. Hilton Obenzinger writes poetry, fiction, history, and criticism, and is the recipient of the American Book Award. According to poet Diane di Prima, “he is the American Jonathan Swift.”
Hilton Obenzinger writes poetry, fiction, history, and criticism. His books include This Passover or the Next I Will Never be in Jerusalem, which received the American Book Award, Cannibal Eliot and the Lost Histories of San Francisco, American Palestine: Melville, Twain and the Holy Land Mania, New York on Fire, a*hole: a novel, and the oral history Running through Fire: How I Survived the Holocaust by Zosia Goldberg. Recently, he has published his autobiographical novel Busy Dying and How We Write: The Varieties of Writing Experience. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated Columbia University in 1969, taught elementary school on the Yurok Indian reservation, nursery school in San Francisco, ran an offset press at a community print shop in San Francisco’s Mission District, worked as a commercial writer for business and industry, and taught writing, literature and American Studies at Stanford University. He is currently Associate Director of the Stanford Chinese Railroad Workers in North America project.

Gabrielle Selz
2017-11-15 19:30 - 21:30 | Hagerty Lounge, SMC, 1928 Saint Mary's Road, Moraga , CA, 94575, United States
Gabrielle Selz is an award-winning author. Her debut memoir Unstill Life, published by W.W. Norton in 2014, received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and was listed as one of the best books of 2014 by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, MORE Magazine, the L.A. Times, and Newsday. She writes art criticism for Art Papers, Hyperallergic, and the Huffington Post. Selz is a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and was a New York Moth Story Slam Winner. Selz is currently writing the biography of the artist, Sam Francis.

Red, Yellow, Green: Alejandro Saravia + María José Giménez
2017-11-16 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
AUTHOR

Alejandro Saravia

Alejandro Saravia was born in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and since 1986 has lived in Quebec, where he works as a journalist. His publications include the novel Rojo, amarillo y verde (2003), Borealis Antología Literaria de El Dorado (Verbum Veritas – La cita trunca Editores, Ottawa, 2011), Dieciocho voces de la poesía hispano-canadiense (Acento Editores, Guadalajara, México, 2009), Cuentos de nuestra palabra en Canadá: primera hornada(Editorial Nuestra Palabra, Toronto, 2009), Las imposturas de Eros, cuentos de amor en la posmodernidad (Editorial Lugar Común, Ottawa, 2009), The Fourth River (Chatham University, Pittsburgh, 2009) Retrato de una nube, Primera antología del cuento hispano canadiense (Editorial Lugar Común, Ottawa, 2008), La poésie prend le métro (Éditions Adage, Montréal, 2004) and Boreal, Antología de poesía latinoamericana en Canadá(Editorial Verbum Veritas – La cita trunca, Ottawa, 2002).He is co-director of Montreal’s Hispanic-Canadian collective The Apostles Review.

TRANSLATOR
María José Giménez

María José Giménez is a Venezuelan-Canadian poet and translator. Recipient of a 2016 Gabo Prize for Translation and fellowships from the NEA, The Banff International Literary Translation Centre, and the Katharine Bakeless Nason Endowment, María José is co-director of Montreal’s collective The Apostles Review and Assistant Translation Editor for Drunken Boat.

NOVEMBER 16, 2017 | 7:30PM

RSVP

Bolivian-Canadian writer Alejandro Saravia and poet and translator María José Giménez discuss his new novel, Red, Yellow, Green, the first to be translated into English, as well as the tumultuous existence of the exile, the crossings of language, and Latino-Canadian literature.

Julia Bouwsma + Tess Taylor
2017-11-16 19:30 - 21:30 | Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave, San Rafael , CA, 94901, United States
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, freelance editor, critic, and small-town librarian. She is the author of MIDDEN (Fordham University Press, forthcoming 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). Her poems and book reviews appear in Bellingham Review, Colorado Review, Muzzle, Salamander, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She is the recipient of the 2016-17 Poets Out Loud Prize, the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award, and residencies from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, Bouwsma currently serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.

Tess Taylor‘s chapbook, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship. The San Francisco Chronicle called her first book, The Forage House, “stunning” and it was a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award. Her second book, Work & Days, was called “our moment’s Georgic” by critic Steph Burt and was named one of the 10 best books of poetry of 2016 by the New York Times. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and other places. Taylor has received awards and fellowships from MacDowell, Headlands Center for the Arts, and The International Center for Jefferson Studies. Taylor currently chairs the poetry committee of the National Book Critics Circle and is the on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered. She was most recently a Distinguished Fulbright US Scholar at the Seamus Heaney Centre at Queen’s University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Black Took Collective
2017-11-17 16:00 - 18:00 | Maude Fife Room, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Co-Founded in 1999 by Duriel E. Harris, Dawn Lundy Martin and Ronaldo V. Wilson at Cave Canem, a retreat for African American Poets, Black Took Collective is a group of younger Black post-theorists who perform and write in hybrid experimental forms, embracing radical poetics and cutting-edge critical theory about race, gender, and sexuality. Their manifesto, “Call for Dissonance,” appears in FENCE, Fall/Winter 2002 and A Best of Fence Anthology: The First Nine Years.

THERE 18
2017-11-17 19:00 - 21:00 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
featuring a quartet of local authors: Joey Garcia, fiction writer Elizabeth James, essayist Jane Anne Staw, and Shelley Blanton-Stroud, plus music TBA.
THERE (THe Eastbay Reading Extravaganza) is a reading series showcasing emerging and established writers from Oakland and Berkeley, with the occasional San Franciscan. Doug hosts it on the third Friday of each month at Octopus Literary Salon in Uptown Oakland. It also features a live original musical performance by a local musical artist at “halftime” of each month’s reading, and Doug’s famous original LitQuiz literary trivia contest. It’s from 7:00-9:00pm. THERE has been putting the there back in Oakland since 2015!

Cristina Rivera Garza w/ Mauro Javier Cardenas
2017-11-17 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Mexican writer Cristina Rivera Garza discusses her new novel, The Iliac Crest, with Mauro Javier Cardenas.
Praise for The Iliac Crest
“An intelligent, beautiful story about bodies disguised as a story about language disguised as a story about night terrors. Cristina Rivera Garza does not respect what is expected of a writer, of a novel, of language. She is an agitator.” —Yuri Herrera, author of Kingdom Cons
“Like the ocean itself, Cristina Rivera Garza writes a world where borders shift and dissolve. In the curves of the fantastic, the highest realism is born. This world is weird. This world is so deeply true. Reader, I love this wholly perfect book.”—Samantha Hunt, author of Mr. Splitfoot
“Warning: Cristina Rivera Garza is an explosive writer yet to be fully accounted for in English. She is an insubordinate stylist, a skilled creator of atmospheric and haunting language, and The Iliac Crest is a willfully queer piece where the workings of her wild imagination destabilize everything.” —Lina Meruane, author of Seeing Red
About The Iliac Crest

Book Launch: Sin Against the Race, a novel
2017-11-18 15:30 - 17:30 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Come celebrate the publication of Sin Against the Race, a new novel by Oakland-based writer Gar McVey-Russell.
Sin Against the Race follows the coming out journey of Alfonso Rutherford Berry III, son of a city councilman and grandson of the state’s first African American legislator. During his journey, Alfonso makes new friends, finds love, and discovers his own voice. Written in taut prose steeped in history and current events–and seasoned with the blues–Sin Against the Race follows the coming-of-age journey of a young black gay man as he progresses from an invisible councilman’s son to a formidable presence in his community.
The author will read from the book, take questions, and sign copies. Come and mingle in a haze of jazz and the delicious wine, beer, and food offered by Octopus Literary Salon.
About the author: Gar began writing early in life, but thought he wanted to be an astronomer. (He also thought he was straight. Go figure.)
At UCLA, he co-created a left-leaning paper called Free Association. He also wrote commentaries for The Daily Bruin and feature articles for the LGBTQ newsmagazine Ten Percent, for which he received an award.
He began fiction writing in the early 90s. His work has appeared in Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (1993), and other publications.
Gar is married and lives in Oakland, California.

Let's Create The World We Want! The 4th Howard Zinn Book Fair
2017-11-19 10:00 - 18:00 | City College of San Francisco – Mission Campus, 1125 valencia Street, San Francisco,, 94110
It’s been a tough year in the US for anyone who cares about fairness, justice and equality and a lot of folks may be giving into cynicism and even despair over the apparent destruction of the few vestiges of democracy left in this country. However, one bright spot is the 4th Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair which focuses on The World We Want!

We gather together authors, zinesters, bloggers and publishers for a day of nearly 60 readings, panel discussions and workshops exploring the value of dissident histories towards building a better future with visions that excite our passions. In the spirit of the late historian Howard Zinn we recognize the stories of the ways that everyday people have risen to propose a world beyond empires big and small. There will also be a big room full of radical book sellers, publishers and community organizations who all have fresh, vibrant views on the kind of world we could have and are working hard to make that happen.

We will have over 120 speakers, including:

* Adam Hochschild, NY Times Best-Selling author of Spain in Our Hearts and King Leopold’s Ghost

* Sekou Odinga, former Black Panther Party member and recently released political prisoner, author of In the Whirlwind

* Rebecca Solnit, Harper’s contributing editor and author of The Mother of All Questions and Men Explain Things to Me will discuss What’s Next for the Resistance

* Punk icon, Michelle Cruz Gonzales, author of the Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Punk Band

* Sasha Lilly, local activist, Pacifica Radio host and author/editor of numerous books including Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult

We will also have a five session track dedicated to exploring what ‘Black Reconstruction In Our Time’ would look like based on the seminal writings of W.E.B. Du Bois.

You can see our full line-up of amazing speakers and exhibitors at: howardzinnbookfair.com

The Howard Zinn Book Fair has become one of the largest gatherings of progressive-thinking people in SF in recent years and is sure to cheer even the most jaded cynic. Please join us Sunday, Nov. 19 from 10am to 6pm at SF City College’s Mission Campus at 1125 Valencia Street near 22nd and help create the world we really want!

Child care will be available, the Mission Campus cafe will be open and, thanks to a bunch if generous donors, the whole event is free!

Avotcja + David Hathwell
2017-11-21 18:30 - 20:30 | North Beach, SF Public Library, 850 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States

Gail Mitchell + Michael Koch
2017-11-28 18:30 - 20:30 | North Beach, SF Public Library, 850 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States

Spring Washam: A Fierce Heart
2017-11-28 19:30 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
“Cultivating a fierce heart is about learning to embrace it all, even the most painful aspects of our life—every experience and all of ourself.”
– Spring Washam
In A Fierce Heart, Spring Washam shares her contemporary, unique interpretation of the Buddha’s 2,500-year-old teachings, with short chapters that get to the heart of mindfulness, wisdom, loving kindness, and compassion.
Woven throughout the book are stories from the author’s life, family, and ancestors, along with many soulful, heartfelt stories from all over the world. Washam’s teachings focus on social action, multiculturalism, and youth, making the Dharma welcoming to as large and wide a community as possible.
Anyone who has suffered will benefit from the life-saving teachings of this charismatic teacher. Her humor, enthusiasm, and energy are a refreshing addition to the pantheon of books on mindfulness.
—
Spring Washam is a founding member and core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center, and a well-known meditation and dharma teacher based in Oakland, California.

Helen Benedict w/ Ayelet Waldman
2017-11-29 19:30 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Booksmith is thrilled to host Helen Benedict for her new novel Wolf Season. She’ll be in conversation with Ayelet Waldman (A Really Good Day). Join us!
After a hurricane devastates a small town in upstate New York, the lives of three women and their young children are irrevocably changed. Rin, an Iraq War veteran, tries to protect her blind daughter and the three wolves under her care. Naema, a widowed doctor who fled Iraq with her wounded son, faces life-threatening injuries and confusion about her feelings for Louis, a veteran and widower harboring his own secrets and guilt. Beth, who is raising a troubled son, waits out her marine husband’s deployment in Afghanistan, equally afraid of him coming home and of him never returning at all. As they struggle to maintain their humanity and find hope, their war-torn lives collide in a way that will affect their entire community.
Helen Benedict, a professor at Columbia University, writes frequently about justice, women, soldiers, and war. She is the author of seven novels, including Wolf Season (forthcoming from Bellevue Literary Press) and Sand Queen, a Publishers Weekly “Best Contemporary War Novel.” A recipient of both the Ida B. Wells Award for Bravery in Journalism and the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism, Benedict is also the author of five works of nonfiction and the play The Lonely Soldier Monologues: Women at War in Iraq. She lives in New York.
Ayelet Waldman is the author of A Really Good Day: How Microdosing Made a Mega Difference in My Mood, My Marriage, and My Life, the novels Love and Treasure, Red Hook Road, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, and Daughter’s Keeper, as well as of the essay collection Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace and the Mommy-Track Mystery series. She is the editor of Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons and of the forthcoming Kingdom of Olives and Ash: Writers Confront the Occupation. She was a Federal public defender and an adjunct professor at the UC Berkeley law school where she developed and taught a course on the legal implications of the War on Drugs. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Michael Chabon, and their four children.

InsideStorytime LAYERS
2017-11-30 19:00 - 21:00 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Will feature readings accompanied by the music of Makram Abu-Shakra. The readers will be Zubair Ahmed (City of Rivers), Sean Taylor (Your Smallest Bones), Ammi Keller, Nancy Au, and Teck Sway-Bien.

BAPC First Saturday Reading
2017-12-02 15:00 - 17:00 | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
Addison is one block south of and parallel to University Ave.
between Acton & Bonar St.
Parking on the street (NOT in the S.C.L. parking lot)
Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting location
(usually Movie Room, or backyard garden)
All Ages Welcome
Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around —
3-5 minutes per poet/reader, or “just listening” is fine too 🙂
